Friday, 23 October 2015

Blogger's Crafternoon in Manchester with Hillarys

Around the end of September I was kindly invited along to a afternoon of crafts (or a crafternoon if you will) with Hillarys and The Crafty Hen to celebrate the launch of the latest range of fabrics from Hillarys 'Jewel Edit'. If you've been a reader of This Fashion is Mine for a while you'll know I love getting crafty and making, baking and creating things. I think the DIY section of this blog speaks for itself! So I was really excited to learn new things and get together with other bloggers in Manchester. The event took place at Zifferblat in the Northern Quarter which is such a hidden gem, a cafe in which you pay for your time but all the cake, tea & coffee is free! We had a room of our own away from the public and spent the afternoon learning how to create two craft projects; a jewellery box complete with ring rolls and a fabric Suffolk puff as a keyring, hair accessory or brooch.

The fabrics we used were supplied by Hillarys from their Jewel collection and there was a beautiful mix of soft creams and gold contrasting with bold pinks. I chose a beautiful floral pink fabric with great texture to it for my Suffolk puff. I reversed the fabric for the larger puff and used the right-side floral design for the smaller puff so when built up together they look just like this! Adding a bit of hot pink netting in a bow shape and a pink button right in the centre tied everything together. I attached a small crocodile clip to the back so it can be worn in your hair, on clothes or even clipped to a bag. This was possibly the easier of the two crafts to make. All you needed was a minimal amount of sewing experience and some creative flair. You could really go to town with these and other bloggers made some wild and fantastic designs!

The jewellery box with ring rolls was a little trickier, only due to the many steps involved and working with a hot glue gun! I actually made a padded cushion for half of my box which I thought would be a perfect place for your watch. I used buttons and ribbons to decorate the lid and continued the theme inside with a piece of ribbon around the ring rolls and buttons on the 'watch cushion'.

You can see in this photo above some of the thread, buttons and ribbons available for us to use. I must say a big thank you to Hillarys for inviting me along to their Crafternoon event and to The Crafty Hen for teaching these two fun diys! You can read Hillarys blog post about the day and see more photos here. They have inspired me to get back to blogging more of my own diy tutorials and dig out my glue gun...